Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Something Something Rob Dibble Something Something

When Washington Nationals fans absolutely, positively have stay informed about the hot topics concerning the team -- such as, for example, what Rob Dibble thinks about Barry Bonds -- there is only one place to turn: the Washington Examiner, home of Jim Williams's Emmy-winning, free-from-the-bounds-of-proper-syntax-and-spelling-and-comma-usage brand of journalism. Recounting "a very candid,and entertaing" interview Dibble did on what appears to be an obscure sports radio show, Williams writes:

Dibble is as fun and as interesting as ever. He all talks about Barry Bonds - saying that during Bonds’ playing days in Pittsburgh, Bonds’ own teammates would ask opposing pitchers to hit Barry.

“I like Barry personally. He’s never been bad to me and has always been respectful to my wife and I, etc so I deal with him on a different level. When he was with the Pirates, his teammates would come to Norm Charlton and I and say, ‘we’ll give you a steak dinner if you hit him.’”

If I were doing a Rob Neyer-style "Tracer" or were intent on "Fisking" some very low-hanging fruit, I'd note that pitchers league-wide seemed rather distrustful that Bonds's teammates would actually follow through with that steak dinner, insofar as a peek at Baseball Reference shows that Bonds didn't seem to get hit with very many pitches during his time as a Pirate. Maybe opposing pitchers were fearful that plunking Bonds too much would flood the market for steak dinners. But I'm not one to doubt the veracity of any ex-ballplayer's stories (except perhaps if that ex-ballplayer is Billy Ripken) although I do question why Jim Williams would think anyone reading the Washington Examiner would particularly care.

On to slightly more pertinent topics, Williams also reports that Dibble speculates that Steven Strasburg's father is the one who got Dibble fired. And all this time, I thought it was Garrett Mock's second cousin.